Euroflax sport: An idea.

That damn high maintenance yarn has been laundered, but not yet wound into balls.

After knitting up the shawlette, I have an idea for what to make of these skeins...

and I think I'm going to need a third one. *sigh* oh well, I will see when the time comes.

Scheaffer Anne: Star stitch shawlette

This skein of sock yarn? Loved it.

but I hate knitting socks. this is a simple fact. so it laid around for a while, until I decided to make it into a shawlette while I taught myself Star Stitch.

It's nice. I just have to figure out what I want for a border...

Louet Euroflax: high maintenance.

I have been tearing my hair out over this stuff.


I bought two skeins of Wuroflax wetspun fine yarn in a beautiful shade of brown, and it defies me at every turn.

apparently it biases when knitted in stockinette, so my notion of a simple draping design is out. apparently it's best for lace.

I suck at lace.

it's also stiff as twine and it doesn't matter how tiny my needles are, the stitches come out huge.

well the good ladies at ravelry say that it should be prewashed.

I've already wound it into balls.

*headdesk*

Adventures in Bargain Yarn - The Sean Sheep Sweater

I think I'm going to frog it and start over.

But I stare at it, all those stitches, and I just kind of muppet flail at undoing so much work. but at the same time, I've made a number of mistakes, there are things about it I want to change, and changing them means that I have to start over from the beginning.

And I'm going to. it may be bargain yarn, but it shouldn't be *wasted* yarn.

Please hold this thread as I walk away...

Sean sheep generic raglan sweater

...I don't have it in me to do a whole bunch of complicated cables, at the moment. The sean sheep is just a top down raglan, very plain jane mindless stockinette I can pick up and put down.

and even that sparks future project ideas. I have some more bargain yarn stashed away, and I'm going to make a dress from it. crazy to knit fall and winter garments in may, but...

The linen is intimidating me, bigtime. I'm scared that two skeins aren't going to be enough for a top. I can't stockinette it because it will bias. I didn't really want to make a lace top from this yarn, but I don't see much choice. so the linen project is still percolating, while I think it over and decide what's going to be best for it.

And i'm looking forward to this sweater. I think it's going to be just what I want - a classic.

Adventures in Bargain Yarn - Sean Sheep Armytage

I'm not going to call this sweater an original design or anything like that. I'm getting the cable stitches out of vogue stitchionary, and I don't think it's quite cricket.

Yeah I'm doing all the work of calculating how it works and everything, but eh. this is more of an exercise than anything else.

I'm not going with an allover Aran. I'm just doing a motif down the center front and back and down the arms, and that's basically it. I'm not going to get the stitch definition I would want for a formal aran, so I will save that for a better wool. like cascade 220, because I love that yarn.

Right now I'm doing a bit of calculation about how to place the cable motif while I'm doing the raglan increases and such. it's just a bit of marking the charts I wrote up, really. then once I've done that I can get rolling on seriously knitting it. It'll be nice to have for cool days, and I know i've got plenty of those. I swear spring is never going to come...

Adventures in Aran Design - Cables that SHAPE.

I've been in a creative frenzy. The ideas never seem to stop.

Just now I was on ravelry, and someone was asking about a girly aran pattern - a cabled sweater with feminine shaping. and my first thought was, "do ribbing on the sides."

Then it became, "create a cable motif with the shaping built in." and i have an amorphous sketch in my mind.

I'm going to go chase it for the Sean Sheep bargain sweater....

Adventures in Bargain Yarn - Sean Sheep Armytage

I usually style myself as a fiber snob on a budget. I usually buy yarn from local, independently owned yarn stores, and while I don't generally have the money to blithely grab whatever without a good hard look at the price tag and the yardage, I want to spend what money I have on the best I can get.

But I was in Wal-Mart. and I wandered into the crafting section. And found this 100% wool yarn by Sean Sheep for two dollars and seventy five cents per 75 gram ball.

so I bought ten of them in colorway "Alabaster." *shrug* It's wool. How bad can it be?

But I'm suspicious. Highly suspicious. So the first thing I did was knit up a proper gauge swatch, hand washed it with mild soap, and laid it out flat to dry. Knitted on 5 mm needles back and forth, I got four stitches to the inch, and 5.667 rows to the inch.

With that much yarn, I think I'll do a sweater. Calgary being what it is, I'll get plenty of opportunity to wear it throughout the year... I'm envisioning cables, even though it is a self striping yarn. A pullover. I'll have to work out which cable motifs I want...

The freestyle top-down femme tee

I wrote plenty on this piece in my project notes, but a bit of a retrospective might not hurt.

This was my first project in a fibre that wasn't animal based since I started to knit seriously. I love the yarn. I adore the yarn. I praise this yarn to the skies. It's so very soft - something that turned me off cotton was the rough feel of cotton.

To knit it at first, my right hand got sore. But I set it down and worked with sproingier wool when I knew I had to stop knitting but didn't want to stop knitting. I think I will always have a sproingy project going at the same time as knitting something with cotton or...*gulp* linen.

I started this from the top down, in the round. It is one piece. I did not break the yarn anywhere on this project.

I used stitch markers to keep track of where my shaping was at. I kept four markers on this project, though their positions changed.

The noticeable bust shaping on this piece, it is joyfully deliberate. It's done specifically to draw the eye. It's my adaptation of a popular in the late 50's and early 60's bust darting, where the seam was definitely part of the point. the darts are in a V shape, meant to give the visual effect of more bustiness and to play on the fact that my overbust measurement doesn't have as much difference to the full bust measurement as my midriff to full bust measure does. And the visual effect works. *evil cackle*

The waist to hip increases are *not* where one would expect. instead of being at the center side, the shaping goes over the hipbones. The other good place would be at the back, where skirt darts would accommodate the buttocks. since I was looking to create a visual hourglass, I went with the increases at the hipbones, to emphasize the flaring from waist to hip. the curving is something I would really exploit in a ribbed/cabled style, and that's something I may do in a future design.

It is becoming evident

That I am going to need a design journal for knitting. I don't really mean to write to an audience, but if someone is looking for notes on something I made on ravelry, I'll do my best to tag it so those things can be found.

And post entires that are one thing at a time for simpler reference.

This post can also serve as a bit of an index, I suppose...